A California developer has staked out a site in Kent to build the Great Wall Shopping Mall, the Northwest's first pan-Asian shopping center.

Omar Lee, a Golden State resident who straddles his time between San Francisco's East Bay area and the Puget Sound region, has filed for a building permit to develop a former Home Base warehouse store into an Asian mall -- a concept successfully developed in greater San Francisco and now thriving in the sinophile suburbs of Vancouver, B.C.

Lee is optimistically targeting a spring 1998 opening for the 100,000-square-foot center, to be anchored by 99 Ranch Market, an Asian supermarket chain where quail eggs and bean paste are no more obscure than white bread and mayonnaise at the Safeway.

Boasting specialty meat, seafood and produce departments -- even a hot deli and bakery -- 99 Ranch Market is much like a western supermarket in design, but ostensibly eastern in its merchandising.

The Los Angeles-based grocery chain will build a 33,500-square-foot supermarket in the Great Wall Shopping Mall -- the first location outside California, where it has 13 stores. The 99 Ranch Market chain has a presence in the Vancouver, B.C., market but those four stores, operating under the T&T Supermarkets name, are part of a joint venture.

Food will be, in fact, a major component in the proposed Kent shopping center.

"We will have seven or eight Asian restaurants including Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and a few different renditions of Chinese cuisine -- Dim Sum, Cantonese, and a Hong Kong style cafe that offers both Asian and Western cuisine," said Lee.

Discount broker Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. is looking at the proposed Kent mall to introduce to Washington state Schwab's new specialized branches targeting a hot niche, Asian investors. San Francisco-based Schwab has four of these centers, three in California and one in Flushing, N.Y., (currently being built).

Schwab spokesman Tom Taggart said its branch in the San Gabriel Asian mall outside Los Angeles draws people from a surprisingly wide radius.

"It's not uncommon for people to drive 20 miles to do business in this one office ... The customers speak very good English, but just prefer to do business in their first language," said Taggart.

If Schwab signs a lease, it won't be the only financial services company in the mall. Washington Mutual confirmed plans to put a small branch inside the new Asian center, though WaMu also has yet to sign a formal agreement.

Lee said he has already leased more than half of the 80,000 square feet of retail space. But he expressed a keen desire to see local businesses such as nail salons and clothing boutiques balance out the tenant melange dominated by out-of-market operators, many California-based.

Barbara Ivanov, executive director of the Kent Chamber of Commerce, said: "I'm thrilled. The chamber has invested a lot into attracting Asian businesses."

There were 172,568 Asians living in the Puget Sound area in 1990, the most recent statistics available from the Puget Sound Regional Council, which includes King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties in its census.

Lee cited a population of 100,000 within a 15-mile radius of the mall as the critical mass of Asians needed to support the retail complex. He said the Kent location, which will draw from concentrated Asian communities in Renton, Tacoma and Federal Way, satisfies that requisite.

Moreover, Lee anticipates a significant number of non-Asian consumers, 30 to 40 percent of the total traffic, to shop The Great Wall because its novelty will pique curiosity.

In Richmond, a Canadian suburb of Vancouver thronged with recent immigrants from Hong Kong, Asian malls are proliferating like mad. Fairchild Developments Ltd., a B.C.-based developer, built Richmond's first, Aberdeen Center, a 116,000-square-foot mall that opened in 1990. Among its 60 tenants is a movie theater that features first-run Chinese films.

Several other Asian-themed retail centers have followed: Parker Place, Yaohan Center and President Plaza. Two more, Continental Plaza and Union Square, are in the pipeline and Aberdeen Center is already planning to expand.

Lee applied for the building permit in June but is still awaiting approval of his plans for the former Home Base, near the intersection of Highway 167 and Interstate 405. He said he is submitting his updated changes, requested by the city of Kent, the week of Sept. 7 and hopes to have city approval within three months.

Lee has formed the Great Wall Development and Management Inc., a Washington-based concern, which is working on financing the project.

"Because this is the first of its kind (here) it's going to be tough. But we can do it is ourselves if we can't get a local lender," he said.

He said the development cost is a moving target and so declined to estimate a cost for the retail project.

Lee, who currently works in Pleasanton, Calif., in San Francisco's East Bay area, said he plans to move to Mercer Island after wrapping up some final projects in California. His previous work in the Seattle market includes commercial and residential developments.